


Of Whispers and Shadows: An Interlude

by sorensen



Series: Of Panic Attacks and Urges to Hug [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Post-Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 17:26:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20679134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sorensen/pseuds/sorensen
Summary: When Emet-Selch is tempered, a piece of Persephone is trapped with him.





	Of Whispers and Shadows: An Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Somehow, I listened to 'Lava' from the Pixar and then wrote this.
> 
> I think I missed the point of the song, maybe?

Everything was dark. Anywhere she tried to turn it was inky blackness that smelled of ash and desperation. Through everything, she could faintly feel the one she loved. Her other half. Her better half, most days.

He was… sad? No. He wasn’t sad, he was scared and desperate, and determined, but it was almost like he’d forgotten she was there. She  _ pushed  _ on the walls keeping her in but they refused to budge, containing her in this void of whispering shadows.

_ Join us, _ they whispered.  _ I will free you, _ it whispered. Did she want to be free? That didn’t sound right. Aside from these walls, nestled here within his soul was where she belonged. She pushed against the walls, flexed desperately trying to find an opening. Where was the rest of her? There should’ve been a stream, a path between them.

There. The rest of her was flooded outside the walls, but it was hesitant to touch the walls surrounding her. Sporadically the part of her trapped outside the walls ramped up and tried to flood over the walls before it retreated in defeat.

Weeks passed.

The bond didn’t  _ work  _ like this it was supposed to be a river that constantly flowed, she wasn’t supposed to be trapped like this she wanted out she wanted back wanted to exchange light and love and joy with the rest of her with  _ him.  _

He was still so desperate, but more than that he was  _ angry  _ and  _ afraid  _ and so very alone. What terrified her the most though was the day a week ago when the parts of her outside the walls were sundered away. Abruptly the stream had stopped, the pieces of her left outside the walls gobbled up by those whispers.

She was alone.

Suddenly the walls stopped their incessant whispering, stopped their endless moving flow of chaos and hate. But they did not fall. Did not free her from the cage she was trapped in, and she was suddenly absolutely certain that even if she was freed, there would be nowhere for her to return to.

Months, years, decades passed.

The more time that passed, the less she saw of the man she loved. Gone was his love. Gone was his laughter, his teasing, gone was everything but a shell of the brilliant man that he was. All that was left was snark, and fear, and that desperation.

She wasn’t even sure who he was anymore.

Centuries passed.

As the centuries turned into millennia and one millennia became two, then three and four she dug away at a single spot in those walls, one fraction of an ilm at a time, digging away at walls thicker than the endless tall buildings of Amaurot had been in height.

Slowly, so very slowly she worked away at those walls. She couldn’t let them notice her again, not after the first time when she’d gotten so far only for them to collapse in and seal away her precious yalms toward freedom.

It took her twice as long before she could see through the walls, and became horrified at what he’d become.

Who was this man? This was not the man who had created gardens in her name, who’d spent centuries wooing her, who’d made her a thousand meals and listened to her endless complaints.

But this was the man who would do  _ anything  _ for his people.

And then, something changed.

Outside of her small opening, she felt it. It was buried deep, beneath too much light, damaged and jagged, but she would always recognize it. It was her after all.

The piece of her was so scared, so sad and afraid, she had to do something. Gently she began her own whispers to his soul. Softly at first, for this risk she took could be the end of her, the end of what small ability she had to keep him from becoming as fully dark as the walls that kept her contained were.

_ Give her a chance, _ she asked. She had to know, had to see if somewhere inside him was still someone worth loving. He’d done terrible things, monstrous things while she watched those shadows that contained her twist at him as well. The shadows had told him that it was ok to kill thousands, that the creatures he was hurting weren’t really whole anyway, so what did it matter. They turned the beautifully lazy man she loved into a fragment of who he had been.

But he went to her. He told her he’d work with her and her allies, he offers to  _ help, _ and she lets him believe that it’s a lie, that it’s the trap the shadows tell him to make, but just as slowly as she had dug at the wall for millennia, she begins to remind him of who he is.

He’s bragging about the terrible things he’s done, and she wants to push him to remember the amazing things he had also done long before that for creatures half as intelligent, for ones who’d had no agency for themselves, and had expected nothing in return, but she’s afraid to move more quickly than she is, already the walls are beginning to form eyes, looking looking looking for opening.

Her friend dies, and she knows she must take the risk she’s been so afraid to make. Gently she caresses a small bit of her soul along with his, reminding him of the Underworld he could see so clearly as others could not, reminding him that he is  _ Emet-Selch  _ and that to pluck a soul from the Lifestream is but a simple thing for him.

She pulls back when he does so, lights up when he  _ teases  _ the fractured piece of her soul without her having needed to encourage it. He watches her. She watches the form that houses the majority of her soul, and when it  _ breaks, _ he goes to it.

And then he caresses her soul with his own, and  _ there. _ Small, tiny, nearly minuscule moments where he was the man she loved still, despite everything he had done, everything he could still do. He doesn’t see her, not really, can’t see past the Light that is obscuring the true color of her soul, but he’s next to her, whispering for her to breathe, counting for her like he had a million times for her before when everything had just become  _ too much. _

He convinces her to talk to her friends, and by the next time he sees her, she glories in the relief he feels. She hides it away for him, scurries to pull the feelings toward her, bury them within herself before the whispering shadows turn them to ash.

It means that the next time he sees her, he tells her she’s not even truly alive, and it hurts and hurts, but she’d rather protect the little bit of him that is  _ good  _ for as long as she can than letting the  _ thing  _ inside him ruin it all.

He goes to her again, watching her in person this time, barely trying to hide his scrying looks for the whispers and she spends nearly the entire time distracting the whispers by pushing at the walls from the inside, keeping them from paying attention to the man who could love her again.

It leaves her exhausted, unable to do more than but watch when he leaves. Next time they meet, she feels the moment when he rages when telling the Warrior about their home when he rallies and remembers that he too had loved once, even if he could not remember just who that had been. He’s furious about the idea of her. Soon, the part of her that is outside is dying of Light, of all things. Her own element, the one that had always been the first to leap to her fingers in battle, and now the one that was strangling her from the inside instead. 

_ Go to her, _ she whispers again. He’s done a terrible thing while she’d been all but asleep, and when he’s looking down at the dying pieces of her soul, she takes the last risk she can, pushes him to reach out to her, to share his aether with her own, stabilize it for a time. She hopes and hopes and hopes that when he does so, he’ll remember, but it’s all for naught.

The whispers see her. It’s all she can do to scurry back through the way, to close up the hole that had led to her freedom, to prevent the shadows from getting  _ in, _ nearly as much as they prevented her from getting out.

She’s failed. She failed and he is trying to  _ kill  _ her and when he does so he will truly be gone to her forever.

Until.

Everything is bursting in Light. Giant spears of it are embedded into the walls the shadows have around them both and the whispers are  _ screaming  _ their hatred for her, but they are fading away until there is a flash, and everything is different.

He is free. He  _ sees  _ her in that moment, sees the Warrior that is his  _ wife  _ , begs her to remember them, so certain that this is the end for him and  _ no,  _ she will not let it end here, has not been contained for millennia to let him give up now, and she  _ pulls  _ her at own soul in the Warrior, begging it to help her, and she feels the trickle of soul slowly move between them once more. It’s barely enough, but she contains him long enough for him to hold himself together on his own.

She wants desperately to rub herself all along him, tempted to flow back along the stream, to return to herself, but the path only goes one way. She can not leave him just yet anyway. Millennia of ruin weigh on his soul.

He still needs her, and so here she will stay, nestled in his soul, content to remind him that he is  _ free, _ that he is  _ loved, _ that he was  _ worth  _ saving.

For now, she remains.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Uhhh... hopefully when you read those words, they made sense. But hey, if you stick around the actual next part has smut?
> 
> Hey! Do you read FFXIV fics (I know you do, you're reading this)? Join our Discord! https://discord.gg/GsPXrc5  
We're a gang of FFXIV readers/writers/artists/game players who are all incredibly supportive of each other and somehow both thirsty and wholesome! (I may or may not have made an Emet-Selch bot~~~ )


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